


Inaccuracy

by orphan_account



Series: Ichabod Crane vs The Modern World [1]
Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Fish out of Temporal Water, Friendship, Gen, Gift Fic, Homesickness, Ichabod hates historical inaccuracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 07:18:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Abbie takes Ichabod to a Revolutionary War re-enactment event, and Ichabod simply won't stop talking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inaccuracy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bulolity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bulolity/gifts).



> Prompted by Buloity here: http://sittingroundthesamovar.tumblr.com/post/61921294210/hm-im-new-to-this-prompt-thing-but-if-you-dont

Ichabod wasn’t entirely certain what a ‘Revolutionary War Re-enactment’ was, because it surely couldn’t be the obvious. Abbie had explicitly stated that the activity was for enjoyment, and Ichabod would honestly wish his experiences (nowhere near the worst any man had suffered in that dreadful war, but certainly terrifying, painful and generally quite horrible) upon no man or woman, no matter their allegiances, ethnicities or beliefs. When he’d asked, Abbie had given him a Look, the meaning of which he had not yet discerned, and patted him on the back.

"Like I said, it’s for fun. Everybody dresses up all fancy, in historical clothes if they can, and it’s a bit like an open-air play. They had those in your day, right?"

Ichabod smiled and nodded, still very much uncertain. He’d learnt that smiling and nodding along to what someone said was a good idea in this new age, and that had made his life exponentially easier as he still had little clue as to what an ‘eyepod’ actually did or why anybody would care what a simple net or a web thought of something, and asking only got him garbled, jumbled explanations involving records which weren’t the real, paper sort, and metaphysical information spaces accessible through medicine and people’s thighs, apparently.

Therefore it wasn’t surprising that Ichabod had been more than slightly apprehensive about the whole day, especially after the absolutely terrifying train ride wherein Ichabod had shut his eyes tightly and tried not to think about how quickly the train was moving and how it must fall off those tiny rails often, while Abbie had rolled her eyes and read a book. However, once he was sitting on the soft green grass, it was far more enjoyable.

Abbie had even let him partake in the ‘fancy dress’, and not forced him to wear stupid jeans or hoodies or sneakers, or any other silly modern clothing. Instead, he wore his real clothes, freshly dry-cleaned (though still slightly stained), with some small alterations to fix some pulled stitches and frays from all the excitement those few weeks ago. Abbie herself wore a pretty gown, in the simple style that the Dutch and poor Colonial women favoured— _had_ favoured— with a pair of ‘sweat pants’ beneath, and an unsightly pair of special running shoes. Ichabod was fast growing used to how ridiculous the names of modern things were.

He couldn’t help but point out to Abbie on every occasion possible the various inaccuracies in the performance, and quite luckily many of the people who had been sitting near them had decided to move, so that Ichabod and Abbie could enjoy this particularly nice spot in peace, being not nearly as crowded as the rest of the public park.

"Oh, also, the bullets they’re using are the wrong sort entirely. We had little paper pouches with a pre-weighed amount of gunpowder in them, along with a little ball, which meant that we no longer had to hope we wouldn’t misfire or blow our hands off, isn’t that marvellous? We stopped using the sort they are in… oh, I think it was in the thirties? Well before my time as a soldier, I can tell you that."

"Mm-hmm," Abbie said, absently. She was of course paying rapt attention. Who couldn’t, with all the interesting things Ichabod had to say? Things like how the actor’s uniforms were made of a weird modern fabric, not the hand-dyed cotton and linen they should’ve been, and their leathers were far better quality and nearly new in appearance. In fact- and this was the funniest part, Ichabod simply could not stop grinning and letting out nearly-silent chuckles at this—  _the Patriot’s uniforms all matched!_

The staged battle was actually very interesting, despite its many faults. Obviously the commanders of the battle weren’t actually nearly as heroic as the re-enactment suggested, some parts having apparently been made up purely to favour the Patriots (Ichabod was no fool. He was well aware of the atrocities committed by both sides, the need for freedom from tyranny being the only justification for the terrible things his comrades did) but overall it was a well-wrought and engrossing performance. If only real battles were so well-co-ordinated. Sadly, with ill-trained and badly-equipped soldiers, terrible weather conditions and the relentless weight of war upon one’s shoulders, it had been difficult enough to even have enough soldiers to make up a regiment.

"These things are like public history lessons," Abbie said, when the actors dispersed, several hours later. She’d even been so kind as to treat Ichabod to ice cream, a future delicacy much nicer than the flavoured ice shavings the rich used to eat in Ichabod’s time. It dripped all over his jacket, and the sun had been far hotter than Ichabod had anticipated, but all in all, it had been a most pleasant day.

"It was very informative," Ichabod said. "Or at least the parts they didn’t get wrong were. They did rather well, all things considered."

Abbie chuckled. “Good to know,” she said. “The way you were talking back there, I was starting to think they didn’t get anything right at all.”

"Oh, quite the opposite!" Ichabod said. "There were a number of details that were embellished, and an incredible amount of botched or overlooked details in clothing and weaponry and speech, but most of the performance was more or less as I heard it’d happened, from the generals themselves."

"Nice to hear that," Abbie said. She paused for a moment, looking at Ichabod’s face as though she’f just remembered something, and gave a small grimace. "I forgot to get you sunscreen. We’ll pick up some aloe vera gel on the way home."

"Sun screens?"

"Sunscreen. One word. It’s like a skin cream that stops pale people’s skin from burning when they go in the sunlight," Abbie supplied. "And aloe—"

"I know what aloe vera is," Ichabod said. "We had it back in my time, too. It was just rather rare."

"There’s more of it here," Abbie said.

"It seems there’s more of everything here," Ichabod replied. "I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it."

"You’ll get used to it. There’s another re-enactment in New Jersey next month, if you want to go to that."

Ichabod nodded, glancing at the dressed-up crowds. If he ignored the people in modern clothes and the decidedly futuristic handbags and cellphones the historically clothed people carried, then he could almost pretend he wasn’t two hundred and fifty years in the future, that when he went back home Katrina would be waiting for him with a smile and some of her special herbal tea. Was it possible to be homesick for a time period instead of a place? If so, Ichabod was very homesick for the late eighteenth century.

"That would be very nice, yes," he murmured. "If that’s all right."

Abbie gave him a friendly smile, and patted his shoulder in the entirely overly familiar way people from the twenty-first century were inclined to.

"It’s fine," she said, and took his arm to guide them both back to the train station.


End file.
